Sphinx at the Kitchen Table

Marcus lined up the vitamin supplements on the granite counter—C, D3, Omega-3, a constellation of pills that promised to forestall the inevitable. Forty-five years old and he'd started measuring mortality in milligrams.

"You're taking them again," Elena said from the kitchen table. She had that sphinx-like quality lately—present but unreadable, posed with questions she'd never ask aloud. Her swimming bag sat by the door, smelling faintly of chlorine and escape.

"They help," he said, though he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt helped by anything.

"Do they?"

The silence stretched between them like the seventh inning stretch. Outside, the neighborhood kids played baseball, the crack of the bat echoing through the humid evening. Marcus remembered playing, remembered believing that if you just kept swinging, eventually you'd connect.

"I'm going to the pool," Elena said, standing up. "Don't wait up."

She'd been swimming more lately, hour after hour of laps, as if trying to outdistance something chasing her. Or maybe swimming toward something he couldn't see.

"Elena, wait."

"What?" She turned, and for a moment he saw everything—the exhaustion, the quiet rage, the love that had curdled into something unrecognizable.

"I don't know how to fix this."

"Fix what? The way you charge through every conversation like a bull in a china shop? Or the way you think pills and baseball games and pretending everything's fine will somehow—" She stopped. "Some riddles don't have answers, Marcus. Some sphinxes just eat you."

She left. He heard the front door close, the car start. He took his vitamins anyway. Some habits were harder to break than hearts.

Later that night, he sat alone and watched the baseball game, counting the pitches, measuring time in innings. Outside, somewhere in the dark, his wife was swimming, cutting through water that reflected nothing back. He wondered if she was drowning or finally learning to breathe.

The vitamins sat on the counter. The sphinx had left the building, taking her riddles with her. Tomorrow he'd stop taking the pills. Tomorrow he'd learn to swim. Tomorrow, maybe, he'd finally ask the right questions.